The Effect of Inter-Link Dependencies on the Connectivity of Wireless Mesh Networks

This paper presents a novel methodology for finding the network connectivity in wireless mesh networks. This methodology takes into account link dependencies in neighboring nodes. The methodology was used to determine the upper bound for the connectivity in a one-dimensional chain topology as well as in the two-dimensional triangular lattice topology. We show that the assumption of link independence almost always underestimates the network connectivity. Our derived closed form expressions hence serve as more accurate upper bounds for network connectivity. The conducted comparison studies show that the error due to the assumption of node independence depends on the link connectivity, and can be very significant. The devised methodology can also be used to quantify the error and define the range of link connectivities within which the assumption of link independence can be used.